


What Angel Wants, aka Mating, Part 2

by Herself_nyc



Series: Mating [2]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:54:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2234769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herself_nyc/pseuds/Herself_nyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That's why we're here, right?"  Buffy ticked reasons off on her fingers.  "You're not going to desert Angel, and I didn't want to have to choose which of you I was more in love with, and we all have a capital-M Mission.  Hence paint versus wallpaper and clearing the air with Angel."</p><p>Spike slumped in the seat and took a long sip of his milkshake.  "What's it you really <i>want</i>, pet?"</p><p>"I want us not to be awkward."</p><p>"An' what else?  You want him in our brand-new you-an'-me bed?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Angel Wants, aka Mating, Part 2

**Author's Note:**

> After _Mating_ I tried to write a sequel, and only got so far. But rereading it years later, this feels pretty full realized just as it is, so I'm putting it here to cap off the original story.

Buffy flipped through another sheaf of wallpaper samples, but she wasn't really looking anymore. 

"I dunno. Maybe this is a mistake. I mean, yeah, nice suite above the office that we fix up any way we like, absolutely rent-free, _sounds_ like a good idea. But it won't really belong to us. The Hyperion is Angel's. If things between us go south, _living_ there could get really awkward, right? Maybe we should get an apartment. It would be private. It would be ours." 

This symphony of 'we' and 'us' distracted Spike at first from the actual content of her complaint. As did her freshly-blonded hair, gleaming in the bright wattage of the store lights. And the jade silk top that molded so snugly around her breasts and shoulders--a top she'd actually bought because he pointed it out to her in a shop window as something that would suit her. He couldn't get over that. She'd dressed to please him. 

Buffy thumped a fist on the counter. "You're not even listening. You're on such a cloud of Happy Boyfriendiness that I could say _anything_ and you'd just go on giving me those doe-eyes that, okay, are really something." 

"We just bought a bed." 

Her eyes twinkled. "Yes. Yes we did." 

"A bed for us. That belongs to us. The bed of Buffy and Spike." 

"And now I'm saying maybe we want that bed to be in an apartment that's of Buffy and Spike too. We could have our names together on the mailbox. Summers and-- _Pratt_. Pratt? Really?" 

"S'a perfectly good name. There's a big school in New York called Pratt. There's a company makes thingumabobs, too." 

"Any relation?" 

"No. But it doesn't matter, because no one's going to be callin' me by anything but Spike. An' it's not as if you're gonna call yourself Mrs William Pratt, either." 

"Well, true." 

"Angel gave you the pick of the suites. He's all eager to pay for any renovations you say, all the decoratin', brand new furniture, special glass so I don't burn up when you open the blinds. If you turn that down an' say you want to go live somewhere else, his widdle feelin's will be hurt." 

Buffy drew another wallpaper book towards her, and started turning the pages. "Well, we couldn't have that." 

"Not if we don't want his personal storm cloud to get so big it engulfs the whole place." 

She flipped a few more pages. She hated having to feel responsible for any part of Angel's pained alienation. He was the one who'd messed up with her, and now _she_ was being killed with kindness. Buffy slammed the book. "I hate wallpaper. Why am I looking at wallpaper? Paint. We'll go with paint." 

"Paint it is." 

She slid off the stool, headed towards the paint section. "What's your favorite color?" 

"Three guesses." 

"Oh, _right._ Red. Well ... red would be dramatic. And cozy. We could do red." She turned to regard him. "Except--would living in a red room make you fat?" 

"Huh?" 

"Well, I know if I lived in a brown room, like chocolate, I'd be thinking about chocolate all the time, and then I'd be _eating_ it, and then I'd be fat. So--" 

"Doesn't work like that with me." 

"Okay. If you're sure." 

"I'm sure. Though livin' in such close proximity to your silky little snatch does make me want to eat that every day an' night." 

" _Spike!_ " 

"What? No one's listening to us." 

"You better hope they're not." Buffy glanced around. There was another couple at the paint swatch display, but they were absorbed in the color array. 

She'd never imagined herself coupled with Spike, not even in the year when she'd mourned and missed him. Patrolling with him, yes, out in the city, taking on demons and vamps night after night, they were, as always, a well-matched fighting pair, setting 'em up and knocking 'em off, quipping and teasing their prey and each other. But the rest of this new LA life constantly startled her. Sleeping with Spike--not the sex, but the literal sleeping, how he always spooned her, imbibing her warmth, how she'd wake sometimes at the tip of dawn with his unbreathing face buried deep in her hair, mouth against her nape, reminding her that he was a vampire, as if she could ever forget. Talking with him, about whose turn it was to do the laundry, and what sort of picnic they should take to the beach, and things they'd never ever talked about before--movies they both liked, or both hated, or thought the other one should see. Poetry. To her astonishment, Spike knew poems, seemingly by their hundreds--knew them off by heart, and could say them to her in a way that wasn't like some boring college assignment, but filled her with a strange heart-wrenching excitement. Shopping with Spike, getting punchy and hilarious in the supermarket at three a.m., strolling hand-in-hand through the Beverly Center pretending to be regular people, regular people with stacks of cash to buy whatever they wanted, but not wanting much of anything, because being with him felt like enough. Berating him afterwards for his shoplifting, which he did with a grifter's skill and the ease of long unconsidering habit--leading to an argument about how even though it wasn't the same as killing and eating people, it was still wrong and he mustn't do it. And on to a discussion about money, about how, as a couple, they were going to live. It was surreal, and exhilirating, and a thrill went through her when she noticed how Spike sort of grimaced but really smiled when she laid down the law. She suspected that sometimes he did things deliberately for the pleasure of her scolding. 

Scolding usually led to sex. 

But then, so did everything else. 

There was so much sex. 

And the whole time this was going on, they were living under Angel's roof, and Angel was there, all gruff and avoidy. She tried to be normal around him, to talk to him the same as always, but he wouldn't permit it, he was all business. Barely spoke at all, and when he did, it was almost always to Spike. 

There was no one anymore to buffer them. Just the three of them in that big hotel. Buffy wished Connor and Faith would come back. She thought about proposing they gather a small contingent of slayers there. A team would be useful. 

But she had to figure out exactly how to bring it up, and in the meanwhile, there was their suite to decorate. 

She reached for the red paint strips, but Spike intercepted her hand. "Now you've gone an' got me all excited, talkin' about chocolate an' blood. Let's get out of here."  
  
  
  


Buffy chewed a french-fry. "You should talk to Angel." 

"I should?" 

"It's time for him to stop being all dog-in-the-manger, don't you think? So we slept together, and he was mean afterwards, and I was angry. But that was weeks ago, and no souls were displaced. We Must Move On." 

"You can tell him that. Here, are you going to finish these?" 

"I was, but I shouldn't, so you have them." 

They were parked at the extreme edge of the lot at In-and-Out Burger, having a post-back-seat-shag snack. Spike's capacity for putting away people-food was another thing that amazed her, now she was getting to know all the diverse sides of him. She'd known him to eat in the before time, but now she was spending her days and nights with him, she'd seen him inhale every species of greasy, spicy, tantalizing horror. He even ate food slathered in garlic-- _burns so good, goin' down,_ he told her with a lippy grin. She was glad he'd never tried to get into her room that night she'd strung the garlic up like Christmas lights to repel him--he'd be laughing at her for that even now if he knew about it. 

"If I tell him, it'll sound like I'm scolding him. Whereas you--" 

"Me what?" 

"You two are friends." 

Spike spat laughter that splattered drops of chocolate milkshake on her face and neck. She grabbed for a napkin. "Hey!" 

"Himself hasn't got any friends." 

"Spike, _seriously._ You two are friends, even if you don't _like_ each other much. That's part of why we're here, right?" She ticked reasons off on her fingers. "You're not going to desert Angel, and I didn't want to have to choose which of you I was more in love with, and we all have a capital-M Mission. Hence paint versus wallpaper and clearing the air with Angel." 

Spike slumped in the seat and took a long sip of his milkshake. "What's it you really _want_ , pet?" 

"I want us not to be awkward." 

"An' what else? You want him in our brand-new you-an'-me bed?" 

"I--" She looked out the window, at the tail-lights of the cars in the drive-through, the smear of neon across the busy intersection. "I haven't thought that far." She wished she could say an unequivocal no, assure Spike that he was enough for her and always would be. In practice he certainly was enough--she could honestly say she was getting all the sex she could possibly want, all the attention and nurturance and worship and company. "I don't know what Angel wants." 

"Blighter doesn't want anything. Doesn't _want_ to want anything, more like. Self-denial's his religion." 

"Doesn't that make you sad?" 

"Would if I was the one bein' denied." 

She turned to squint at him. "Aren't you, though?" 

  
  
  
  


"Me an' the slayer bought ourselves a bed." 

Angel didn't look up. Spike abandoned the doorway of Angel's suite and stalked up behind him. Glanced over his shoulder at the book open on the desk, half expecting to find it was upside down or in some language Angel couldn't read, but it was a Grimoire in French, perfectly intelligable to both of them. "Whazzat? Something brewing?" 

"Just background reading." 

"Right then. Been shopping, got ourselves a bed. Great big one." 

"Am I supposed to have some comment to make on that? Because I don't." 

"Nah. 'Cause you blew your chances there." 

"Spike, get out." 

Buffy was right--he hated being denied, it made him ferocious, what Angel had made himself into since the debacle. He'd been so taken up with Buffy, it was easy to ignore, but ignoring Angel wasn't what he was staying in LA for. And Angel ignoring himself was a big part of what was so damn wrong. 

"Here you sit, lonely as a monument, without so much as a pigeon to shit on your head." 

Angel slammed the tome shut. " _Spike._ Fuck off." 

"You'd just let things go on like this forever, wouldn't you? Openin' your wallet for the slayer an' never actually looking her in the eye, bein' all polite to both of us an' wanking off in the shower by yourself. Forever an' ever." 

Angel shot up. Spike blocked his incoming fist before it could connect with his cheek, and held on. That was fast. Spike hadn't expected Angel would resort to violence so quickly--but it made sense. He was repressing so hard. 

Spike sprang forward and shoved Angel against the wall. The lamp on the desk wobbled and crashed to the floor. Angel's eyes flashed gold in the sudden darkness as Spike closed the small distance between them. 

"Wanker. Stop bloody pretending you don't need anything!" 

Decades-old memories pancaked and expanded--Angelus manhandling him, biting him, forcing his legs apart, forcing him down, and the sweet pain of giving way. In those days there was never a question of the Old Man denying himself anything, and while he usually claimed to detest him, there was also never a question that he, William, was a requisite, even if only as a favorite toy. 

Spike didn't want to be a toy now, didn't want to play the old game--not exactly. He wanted to jerk Angel out of the rutted track he'd been dragging, round and round and going nowhere like a mule yoked to a pump. 

"You're a blockhead, but you're not made of stone." 

Angel's lips were unyielding, and tasted bitter. He resisted for a long frozen moment Spike's mouth pressed to his, Spike's hands squeezing his rigid biceps. But he didn't thrust him back, so Spike pressed in tighter, prodding Angel's crotch with his leg. "You want me," Spike hissed against Angel's ear. "Admit it, you shite. _Admit it!_ " 

Angel's chest expanded, like he was going to burst. The next moment Spike was tumbling arse over tit. Spike sat up, shook his head to clear the stars and birdies, and sprang to his feet. 

"Didn't come in here for a punch-up over the perpetual torment. Choose again." 

"Then what _are_ you doing?" 

"You're an idiot." Chin up, Spike closed the space between them again. Angel stayed put, still back to the wall, arms at his sides. He was breathing slowly, almost furtively, as if drawing some aroma off the air that he didn't want to be seen to be enjoying. Spike laid a finger softly on Angel's lips. "What am I doing, then? You're a bright boy, think you know." 

"Thought you were off-limits. Which is fine with me." 

"You great twat," Spike whispered, a smile blooming. "I know you want me. An' should do. I'm a favorite lay, aren't I? An' you're parched." A strange tenderness swelled in him, and seemed to communicate to Angel as well, who turned his head aside like a shy schoolgirl. 

"Your courtship skills could use some improvement." 

"Want to be coaxed and cosseted, do you? Sweet-talked out of your trousers." 

"I don't want anything," Angel rapped, then tensed, recognizing too late that he'd played right into Spike's argument. 

Spike chuckled. "Yeah, you do." He plucked at Angel's belt loop. "Come on an' have it, our Liam." 

Angel actually took a couple of steps at Spike's prompting before he stopped. "Where's Buffy?" 

"Not here. This is you an' me." He stepped backwards towards the bedroom, pulling his teeshirt up and off, undoing the top button of his jeans. "C'mon," he said, wriggling, "this seductive enough for you?" 

Now it was Angel who caught him back against the wall, feet off the floor. The old man pinned his wrists over his head, gnawed at his throat, his massive thigh riding up into Spike's crotch. This was more like it. Spike rippled, humped the invading leg. Dragged in air and laughed out loud. 

"What you want?" Angel growled. 

"What _you_ want, Sire." 

  
  
  
  


The nipple clamps were a total surprise. The gag barely left him able to grunt. His arms were pulled up and back, wrists lashed tight together to one immovable bedpost. Angel had him twisted on his side, one leg slung over his shoulder--an angle that made his muscles scream, left him wide open and deprived of all control, and caused Angel's huge splitter to feel even bigger ramming into him. 

Still fully clothed, Angel was fanged out, dicking him hard and fast in a ruthless silence. 

Spike's balls were linked to his brain with a burning red line, pulled taut, threatening to yank him out of all reality. He churned wildly into Angel's thrusts, wildly grateful for the restraints. His cock, which Angel was ignoring, spattered pre-come on his writhing belly. 

This was better than he'd hoped. 

Except he wanted Angel to say something. Even if only to taunt him, tell him he was a slut. The old man wouldn't meet his eyes for more than a moment at a time. 

It was lonely, this way. 

Angel lasted a good long while. When Spike started to shake and groan and come in deep violent shocks, Angel slowed a little, staring at Spike's spouting cock with an abstracted expression, still making no move to touch it. When he arched, flailing, bearing down hard on the cock that filled him, Angel let out a low grunt and speeded up, pounding into him like he was running an uphill race. 

He sank his fangs into Spike's knee when he shot, so there was no sound, just the sharp tearing bite that made him surge and yelp. 

_Sire Sire Sire Sire--!_

His withdrawal was a terrible absence. 

Angel walked away. 

For a couple of interminable minutes Spike wondered if he'd come back. A door opened and closed. He heard water running. 

Then Angel was back, with a wet washcloth and a towel. With one hand he sprang the gag, pulled it away. Spike worked his distended lips, coughed a little. 

Angel didn't look at him. He laid the wet cloth on Spike's belly. It was hot--Spike shivered. Angel swabbed him clean with slow gentle sworls, going on longer than strictly necessary, running a terry-clothed finger into Spike's distended navel, laving his cock and balls. The warm touch made him twitch, and Angel chuckled. 

"You're insatiable, aren't you, Will? How many times does this make, today?" 

"Dunno, who counts? Unlife's good right now." 

Angel continued to play with him, teasing the sensitive head with a corner of the cloth, palming his balls in a warmed hand until Spike grunted. "You love to submit. You love to lie back." 

"I do. Luckiest thing out, to know the secret of bein' a pitcher _an_ ' a catcher." 

Toying with him still, sitting on the side of the bed, watching his handiwork, Angel seemed to muse. "You do this with Buffy?" 

"Submit to her? Can't help it, can I? Always fall for the raging top." 

"Not that. I mean, does she fuck your arse?" 

"N-no. Hasn't occurred to her yet." 

"Huh." Angel seemed surprised. 

"It'll be all kinds of good, when it does." 

The idea brought him fully erect, with a suddenness that made Angel let out a little _chuff_ of amusement. "Would you?" Spike asked. 

Angel was wanking him now, the dirty cloth put aside. Slowly, with exquisite squeezes of the sensitive head, that brought Spike's hips up off the bed. He didn't answer. 

"Well?" 

"Hadn't occurred to me either," Angel murmured. "But ... yeah. I think I would." He bent then, and swallowed Spike's cock into his mouth.  
  
  
  


Later, when Angel was massaging his wrists, he gave Spike one unshadowed look. "So does she know you're here?" 

"You mean, did she send me? No. Course I'll tell her how I spent my time." 

"What a good boyfriend you are," Angel said. "No secrets from your beloved." 

"Know she doesn't want you to give up." 

"Give up what? Her?" 

"Give ... up." Spike leaned in, expecting Angel to shift away, but he let him connect, opened his mouth, kissed back. 

"Next time," Spike said, "Take your bloody clothes off first, like a real man."  
  
  
  


"You're limping." Buffy squinted as Spike walked toward her. He'd been asleep when she came in, and she'd tried not to wake him, but here he was, yawning and pulling at his disordered hair. "Are those _teethmarks_ on your knee?" 

"Was just about to tell you about 'em, yeah." 

She pouted. "You got to have some exciting fight with some exciting demon and I missed it because I was out looking at window treatments." 

"Uh ... yeah. Sort of. Window treatments? That what they're callin' curtains these days?" 

"Yes. And priced accordingly. So what happened? That's an icky bite." 

"It'll heal." 

"You went into the sewer, gunnin' for wabbit?" Spike and Angel favored the sewers--they could hunt when it was broad daylight out, and as Spike liked to observe, there was variety and surprises aplenty in its endless tunnels. "I hope you washed before you got into that nice clean bed." She was at the dresser, brushing her hair. 

Spike came up behind, relieved her of the brush. "Aren't I always clean? Even when I was unadulterated evil, I was tidy. Lemme do this, I like to." 

Buffy bowed her head, and for a few moments they were both quiet as he drew the brush back from her forehead, gathering the hair around it, smoothing it through his fingers. 

"Haven't been in the sewer. Had that chat you suggested with Himself." 

"With Angel? Don't tell me _he_ bit you? In the _knee_?" She turned to confront him. Spike nodded. "He bit you in the knee. That must've been ... some chat." 

"It was." 

She searched his face, but it wasn't hard to read. Her stomach dipped, but rallied as she understood that Spike wasn't concealing anything from her. She wasn't used to such frankness from her love interests. She recalled that scene she'd walked into in the kitchen, a few weeks back--Angel driving the table Spike lay on half across the room before her interruption stopped him. 

"Whose idea was it to--" 

"Mine. He's got to be led by the nose. Not like Angelus." Spike's smile was, she thought, both nostalgic and self-satisfied. 

Now it was a part of her lower down that dipped, and clenched. She shifted her weight quietly from one leg to the other, but she knew Spike knew. 

"What?" Buffy said. 

"Was about to ask you the same thing." 

"You fucked Angel." 

"Yeah. Well, he fucked me, if you want to be technical. That bothers you?" 

"N--no." 

"Makes you jealous?" 

"No." She paused, felt her way through it. "No, it really doesn't. I told him I don't want him to be lonely, and I _meant_ it. I just wonder how does it help get Angel back to not treating _me_ like the princess and the pea?" 

"Doesn't, probably." Spike cocked his head. "Can't be your go-between, willing though I may be. Better you approach him yourself." 

"Have you softened him up for me?" 

"Might have a bit." 

"Then I'll seek him out now before the glow's worn off."  
  
  
  


She waited until they'd been out a while, and had killed a couple of ch'inga demons that were loitering near the tar-pits. 

Angel had seemed mildly surprised when she approached him to patrol with her, but not unwilling. Hadn't asked where Spike was. Hadn't, in fact, spoken at all. Still wasn't speaking, as he threw their axes into his car trunk. 

She tried to think how to begin. He was getting into the car, starting the engine, while she was still standing by the rear bumper. Overhead the moon was a slim crescent, and in the glare of LA, no stars were visible. The night was smeared with neon and floods. 

He glanced around, raising an eyebrow at her. 

"I'm coming." Vaulting into the car--she loved doing that, it was the whole reason for a convertible--she took a breath and just started. "Look, are we still friends?" 

As soon as the words were out, she winced. Spike's pronouncement on them-- _you'll never be friends_ \--hit her like a boomerang that comes back around to clock the inexperienced thrower. Except she shouldn't be an inexperienced thrower any more. She should be able to chew gum and remember at the same time the handful of things she knew for unwavering facts. 

Spike was right. She and Angel weren't friends and would never be friends. And this had nothing to do with friendship and everything to do with intimacy and trust and ... and just getting on with it. The three of them. 

Angel wasn't looking at her--he was pulling out and markedly looking at the traffic, with an expression on his face like he'd been ambushed, which he had. 

"Look, I'm asking if you think we can stop just being polite and distant and instead be ... you know, _close_ , but still polite. Like with you not loading us up with the weird supernatural-slash-Catholic guilt if we have it off together." 

"'Have it off'? You even talk like him now." 

"Yes. Yes I talk like him. Sometimes he talks like me." She sighed. "You know, this has nothing to do with Spike. We both enjoy Spike. I'm not jealous and I honestly think you're not either. This is between _us._ And it's a problem we'd have whether I was with Spike or not." 

"True." They were gliding smoothly along now, Angel pacing them so they hit every light right. 

_Driving around with my vampires,_ she thought. _That's what I do now. I like it._ The pleasure was there, even in this tense moment. 

"You know, it doesn't have to be all hearts and flowers with us. I'm not a teenage girl anymore, you're not my first boyfriend anymore, and you're, excuse me, not brand new to _love_ anymore, either. You've loved other women in between, which believe me, I see as all to the good. We can disagree and fight and irritate each other. I'm totally up for being annoyed by you. What I'm not up for--" 

"I know what you're not up for." His tone wasn't exactly hostile. He still wasn't looking at her, but he was skating just on the good side of keeping this a non-antagonistic conversation. 

"But do you think you can get close to me again and not do that afterwards?" 

"I don't know." 

"I want to try." 

"You don't need to take care of me, Buffy. It's all right that you're with Spike. I can handle it." 

"I don't need you to _handle_ it." _I want you to handle_ me, she thought. "I want you to handle me," she said. It felt good, just bringing it right out there. She smiled. "I plan to handle you too. If ... if you say yes." 

They were on the freeway now, heading west. She hoped they were going to end up near the ocean but didn't want to distract him by asking. "But this isn't just about sex. I want us to be--" 

"Not friends." 

"I want us to take full possession of our irrepressible passion for each other. Because c'mon, it's never going to go away. The more we starve it, the hotter it burns. You can bite _my_ knee too, if the urge comes over you. I heal even faster than he does." 

Angel glanced at her now. For the first time, his face lost its granite rigidity, and the man became visible, the man who laughed at her jokes and was tender to her. The man she hadn't seen in a while. He looked worried, a little sheepish, like a kid being chided. She took the opening, and slid a little closer to him. Wondering at the same time how he got away with not having any seatbelts in the car. "You know, I'm not asking you to be _everything_ to me, like I thought I wanted when I was seventeen. It's not all on you--I've got Spike to make me feel ... to make me feel what he makes me feel. So could you maybe be just what you _can_ be to me, and I'll be that to you also? That's not dire, is it?" 

"No. It's not dire." 

"You're too big with the dire, Angel. There's always going to be another apocalypse, but there's more than that to our days and nights." 

"Yeah. Yeah, what you say makes sense." He still sounded like he wasn't convinced. 

"I'm Sensible Buffy. I'm also Buffy who is over being angry at you for your bad behavior, after our wonderful night together. The most recent wonderful night. Well, both of them. Bye-gones are totally gone bye." 

He didn't look at her this time, but his hand was suddenly wrapped around hers. She squeezed it. 

The wind was starting to smell salty. 

"This is nice, right now. Just regular life," she said. 

Angel said, "Regular life ... I think the last time there really was any regular life for me was when ... when Connor was a baby. For the little while I had him, when we weren't being beseiged. There's nothing like a little baby to sort of bring you down into the moment." 

_Oh great. So what am I supposed to do, make you a baby? Because no._ All the adult pleasures and moments she'd been looking forward to sharing with him, with both members of what she wanted to be her new household, suddenly felt decadent and shallow in the face of Angel's remark. Not to mention that she couldn't somehow picture him caring for a baby. And her mental image of Connor was all about a snarky guy who was macking on Faith. Very grown-up stuff. 

"We can make new memories. New moments." She nudged his shoulder. "Put your arm around me, Angel. It's such a beautiful night."  
  
  
  


He wasn't sure why he wanted to show her the place where Connor had captured him and sunk him in the sea. Maybe because it was the spot, the time, when, of all the crises he'd faced since meeting Whistler, he'd most felt everything go, as Spike would've called it, pear-shaped. Those months of submersion still gave him nightmares, and haunted his waking thoughts. And after his rescue, everything he'd relied on, the friendships that were the rock of his humanity, were ruined or changed out of all recognition. He'd let himself be changed. Even, he couldn't persuade himself from believing, perverted. 

So he showed her, and Buffy, hugging her sweater around herself, looked down the cliff, and out at the glittering water, and then at him. "You didn't deserve what happened here." 

"I'm not so sure." 

" _Please._ Don't you think I had my days when I'd have liked to put _my_ dad in a box and sink him full fathom five? I've had _months_ like that." 

"Buffy--" 

"Connor didn't have all the facts about you." 

"You don't have all the facts about me. That's why--" 

"Oh shut up." 

She seemed a little startled herself, and flapped her hands, the sleeves of her sweater pulled down to her fingers, and said, "No, really shut _up._ We're too much alike, Angel, I know what you're up to. With the _huge_ sense of responsibility and guilt, and it gets to be this ball and chain and you just shut down and stop eating and stop dreaming and have hurtful hostile sex with the person who you won't admit is your best friend." She stamped her foot. "Get over it!" 

For just a moment, it was Cordelia's voice that echoed in his ear. Cordelia used to talk to him like that. He'd been robbed of his chance to love her, and she'd been robbed of ... just robbed. 

The night he'd come here, it was to declare himself to her. His readiness. To take on what, since Buffy, he'd never .... 

Why had that felt riskable, doable, when the same with Buffy still seemed like such a impending debacle? 

Buffy was squinting out at the water again. "Cordy would've been good for you, I think. I'm so sorry she died. I'm sorry I didn't know her the way she grew up to be. I could imagine her being really awful or really great, and apparently she went for really great." 

"Kicking and screaming all the way." 

"Heh." Buffy turned to him, went up on tiptoe to put her face close to his. "In honor of Cordy, okay?" she said, and kissed him.  
  
  
  


They got the blanket out of the car trunk--not the blanket he used to wrap the weapons so they wouldn't rattle, but the blanket Buffy had put there for picnics. It was chilly, but they took off their clothes, and with the sound of the rolling surf in his ears, he lay down with her. No one came to clobber him and drag him away. 

"Let the ocean just be something lovely," she said, wrapping herself around him. Her hair blew against his face, and her mouth on his skin, here, here, here, was a warm wet flower. Then she groaned, "Damn it." 

"What?" 

"I really intended tonight to just be us talking and sort of visiting together. All really low key. But here we are--" 

Here they were. "I need you." Three little words, surprising as if the stiff breeze had sucked them out of him. She let him roll her underneath. He was hungry for her, a hunger that bloomed from contact, like that thing the French said, about appetite coming from the eating. 

Having Spike earlier took no edge off of this. He wanted to touch and kiss her everywhere, but impatience was stronger--he wanted something more savory than the slow sweet ways he'd had her before. He could still count the number of times he'd fucked Buffy on the fingers of one hand. 

She urged him, panting and rippling, coming back at him with a sure intensity. She was small, smaller than Darla, than Dru. Stronger even than them. Knowing that still didn't quite prepare him for what she could do, when shut of all girlish restraint, what her body demanded of his body. She wasn't in the mood for softness either. He'd seen her with Spike but this was something else. She didn't remind him of anything at all. Memory was overlapped, overrun, by present sensation. For the first minutes it was almost like a battle, a challenge for dominance. It took him a while to understand that like him, she wanted both to take and receive, both so avidly that she couldn't settle. 

"I think you're stripping my gears." 

He laughed. Another surprise. Then it was all right. Suddenly the opposing forces of her and him clicked into the right rhythm. A low cry escaped her, her squeeze and thrust perfect, the aroma of her filling his senses, perfect. 

She sank her teeth into his arm when she came, her whole body thrumming around his, flailing. Then tensing as she grabbed him tighter, fucking him to his climax. Her voice in his ear, saying his name over and over until he was lost in long shudders.  
  
  
  


"You," Buffy said. 

"And you." 

"No, I was going to say." He felt her swallow, felt the gradually gentling thubbing of her heart, her moist warmth pressed against him as she settled herself more comfortably along his body. "When I'm with you, I can imagine what it would be like with some amazing, mythical ... like a minotaur or something." 

"A minotaur?" 

"When I was a kid I sort of thought the minotaur in that maze myth was sexy. I didn't really know what sexy _was_ yet, but ... there was something about it that kind of got me, you know." 

"Okay." 

"You get me that way. You just ... okay, I'm going to stop talking now." 

"You don't have to stop." 

"I _am_ changing the subject. I hope we changed this place. This, Point WhatsisName. Now it's not just the place where you got submerged, it's where we came and did ... this." 

"Yes." 

"Okay, I promise I will stop talking now." 

They lay quietly for a few minutes. The breeze picked up, and Buffy shivered, then sat up and faced into the wind, hands up so the air would dry her armpits and the undersides of her breasts. The perfume of her body surrounded him, he breathed her in, the flavor crossing his tongue like wine. Her hair whipped and snapped; she gathered it and let it go and gathered it again. 

"Buffy, there's something I want to tell you about." 

She turned to look at him. There was little light--probably not enough for her to see much detail, but he could see the green flecks of her eyes, the pearly sheen of her teeth. "What is it?" 

"It'll probably make you angry." 

"Oh, then by all means, now is the time." 

"I think it is. I just feel like I ought to disclose ... everything that's been kept back." 

She went solemn, folded her arms around her breasts. 

"Come here first." He pulled her down beside him again, rolled her so his body kept the wind from her bare skin. He couldn't warm her but he could do that much. And it was good that she let him do it, even though she was braced now to hear something she didn't want to hear. 

"I used to make decisions for you--make sacrifices happen that you didn't agree to." 

"You did." 

"There's one instance you don't know about because ... in reality, it never happened. That is, it was undone, and now no one remembers the day but me. I want to tell you, even though it might make you unhappy--not for long, I hope--because it seems more important to me not to have this secret from you anymore. It's a secret that shouldn't be necessary now." 

"Why isn't it necessary?" 

"Because we've just done this." 

He told her then, about the recalled day. The day he'd been restored to life, and she'd been restored to him. Their one purely blissful, consummatory day. And how he'd had to snatch her happiness away from her, undo it completely. 

Buffy listened without interrupting, her head resting on her arm. He could smell how his story upset her, but when he was finished she didn't speak right away, and didn't draw away from him. She put one hand up to trace the line of his breastbone, to settle over his heart. "Good things are going to happen to you now, Angel. Not forever, maybe not even for very long. But I'm going to make sure there are good things, to balance all the ... all this ...." She shed a few tears then, but didn't break down, didn't cry, just went still, breathing moist and warm against his neck for a few long seconds, before, with a determined grunt, pushing forward to rouse and take him again. 

Rocking in his lap, arms and legs encircling him, she whispered, "Am I comforting you? I want to comfort you." 

"You ... yes. Buffy ... yes." 

They drove back to the Hyperion in the hour before dawn, Buffy at the wheel. Angel couldn't take his eyes from her staunch profile. He still wasn't sure she wouldn't return to his confession, that some eruption of anger wasn't to follow. He could see her thinking, but not her thoughts. Still, the lines of her body were all relaxed, he could see too the fun she took in driving the convertible, in the slipstream blowing her hair back. 

As they neared the hotel, she said, "So you told me about it because that means you're never going to do that to me again. I mean, just fix things yourself so as to _spare_ me." 

"That's why I told you, yeah." 

"Then I guess that makes it ... I guess it's okay. But there's still something I want to know." 

"What's that?" 

"What _flavor_ was the ice cream?"  
  
  
  


There were twenty perfect peonies in the bouquet on the mat outside her suite, dewy and so white they almost glowed. Buffy picked them up. The note nestled amongst the flowers said _Called away, back soon. Last night was exquisite. Angel._

Called away, my foot, she thought. This was a last minute exercise in bolting after intimacy, but the flowers and the note were all that was proper. 

"Huh. The old man's never given _me_ any bloody flowers." 

"It's a girl thing." 

"He _is_ a big girl, now you mention it." 

Buffy bestowed a whap. "That is not what I meant and you know it. Would you like one for your button-hole?" 

"Now _you're_ jokin'. What would the world think, Big Bad wearin' flowers?" 

"I have no idea. Haven't you ever? Even in the eighteen-whatevers? Or what about the Summer of Love? You didn't go to San Francisco and wear flowers in your hair?" 

He sniffed. "As if. Ate hippies for breakfast, didn't kit myself out like 'em." 

"Were you a mod or a rocker, Spike?" 

"You obviously know nothin' 'bout me, or you wouldn't even ask such a question." 

His pout made her laugh. 

He squinted at her. "You don't even know what mods 'an rockers _are,_ do you, Slayer?" 

"Not really." She headed for the stairs, on her way to find a vase in the kitchen. Spike, bed-headed and yawning, followed. 

He gestured at the flowers. "So, a nice time was had by both?" 

She nodded dreamily. 

"An' he didn't turn on you like a rabid hamster once he'd had it off?" 

"Nope." 

"Ah, progress." 

"Maybe the next time he'll actually stick around the morning after." 

"No good gettin' too ambitious, Slayer."  
  
  
  



End file.
